Stop Wishing, Start Doing

8/24/18

++++ Intro to be posted later

Dear Recovery Journal, My old journal timed out. I went back to my old thread and I learned that it had been more than 120 days since I had last posted to it. I feel shame about this but also a part of me is proud to be back after a rough patch of heavy porn dependece just to get by.

Today Im just gonna write about how I feel i my body, b/c I almost used just now but I was actually feeling like such crap that I feared how much worse I would feel after I used. Right now my head hurts, my muscles are tired, I feel irritated, so rritated that I want to crawl out of my skin. THe depression i feel feels like a heavyness in my chest and my eyes that tells my brain that Im too tired to do anything of value. It feels like there are a million little beads of anxiety flowing throigh my blood vessels pouring out into my arms and my fingertips.

Part 2 im going to write a list of symtoms that are associated with using porn and by transitive properties also remit when you stop using porn.
1) Chronic ED - Don't have
2) Delayed Ejaculation - Don't have
3) Brain fog/concentration problems - do have
4) Lethergy/ lack of motivation - do have and am currently experiencing
5) Social Anxiety and lack of confidence -do have
6) Depression and emotional numbness - do have and experience often
7) Declining interst in real partners - do experience
Eight) Escalation to porn that does not match original tastes or sexual orientation - do experience example: misoginy and bimbification - go against my values
 
8/27/18

3 days sober

Dear Journal,

I have so many feelings, they are overwhelming. Last night I met a girl that I really liked. She was a friend of one of my firends and she appered very confident on the outside and was very outgoing. Her name was Julia, she made me very nervous. I was feeling very nervous very anxious about coming off as insecure or ruining the connection I was feeling with her last night. I think thats one of my more crippling social anxiety fears, the fear that people (most often girls) will like me when they first meet me because i'm handsome and friendly but then once they get to know me, they will find out that i'm boaring nerdy or socially awkard and they will drop me. I think that comes from watching my mom and modeling after her fears and insecurites. I want to move on this fear.

Im also struggling with lack of good sleep, it seemeems porabable that my sleep apnea has returned and I still havent gotten word from the docotor about when and how I can start treatment. The lack of energy and good sleep plays up my anxit and depression a lot to the point where I get nervous about eeven going outside.

I've been playing messages and scenerios in my head over and over again about how im going to move forwards with my fristrations with organizing in Santa Cruz. I feel a great lack of belonging and mistrust for a lot of the people I have at one time or another trusted and it makes me want to give up on community organizing all together.

Im also nervous about my progress as a dancer and fear that I am not working hard eough to be where I want to be. That being said, fear that Im not training hared enough is not reason to sit aroud and not train.

I write all of this because its better to get my fears, upset feelings, tension and despair out on the page rather than force it under with the mind numbing release of porn. Even as I type right now, it makes me a bit sick to think of myself building up dopamine based on these images on the screen and flooding my brain like a drug addict. I have nothing agains drug addicts as people but what makes me sick is the the sad lonely and completely drained state that I usually sit in after getting my fix of porn.

Part 2: Notes from the " Your brain on porn video"
- Chronic porn use alters the reward circut (both structurally and chemically!!)
- Mamalian brain, limbic system= ancient pathways/ structures that make up the reward circut
- Reward circut effects mood, emotions, desires, drives, love/bonding & ADDICTION
- Alteration in the rewards circut is behind most mental disorders (Social Anxiety, Depression, Schizophrenia, Aniety Bipolar disorder, PTSD)
 
8/28/18

4 days sober

Today was tough, I got really excited and nervous and fucked up because I asked out this girl that I met the other day. She was a friend of my friend that I went to visit. She really intreauges me with her her bubblyness and attrcts me with her confidence. She siad no to my original ask for a date but then said she would be down to go get coffee so Im not sure what shes thinking or feeling except that I think she wants to just be platonic friends because she said she just wants to get to know me as a friend so thats cool. Im trying not to hang my sense of self worth on that admisssion because due to my porn infested brain, I often think anything thats not likely to lead to sex is not worth my time. A part of me (my heart) knows that this is not true though, because I have more interest in her than just a desire to get into her pants. Dare I say she makes me feel warm and fuzzy which kinda scares me.
 

Fappy

Respected Member
Nice streak mate!
Also good for you that you asked this girl out!
That's right, it's your porn-fucked mind that that places value of drilling her over any really meaningful relationship.
But a partner can really be a benefit in this reboot process. Rewiring your brain pathways to real feelings of intimacy are a good weapon in this fight against porn addiction.
Just don't try anything too fast and ruin things.
Keep it up
[deleted bad joke]
 
8/29/18

5 Days Sober

Today I really resonate with the lyrics of Boo'd Up by Ella Mai. It goes
" Feelings, so deep in my feelings
No, this ain't really like me
Can't control my anxiety...
Feeling all over my body
You know how I like it
Ain't gotta tell you what to do"

I woke up today feeling very inensely. A strange side effect (or maybe main effect) of no longer being under the sedation of porn. I can nw feel all of my emotions (both good and bad) more strongly.

Today is fucking hard. I woke up feeling 8 in terms of urgency to use porn. I woke up feeling like I wanted to fuck something, fuck anything. But simply woke up, went straight to the shower put the water pressure on high and just blasted my face and head until my primary focus was finally on the water as opposed to the desires. Then I went straight to my desk and an now typing this journal.

On the plus side of things I feel more energized getting out of bed, little to no depression asporations to do something like go outside and play soccer and optomism about the future. I can immagine a whole day full of wonderous things and wys to improve my life. On the flip side I do feel "on edge" and I worry that if I did some of those things and came back home to realx after a long day of activities I would have much less will power to say no to the sick world of porn.

Therefore Im going to do some exercises to help me shift my state. First focusing on the senseations of the body. I feel tightness in my stomach, tingling in my fingers, heavyness in my forehead.

Last but not least I will visialize what my life looks like porn free and what type of person I can become without the opressive grip of porn on my back. First thing I notice is way more confidence in my day to day life, as Im walking down the street and higher self esteem or self value. That innate and core understanding that I have something amazing (many amazing gifts) to offer to the world. I envison myself being able to confiently efortlessly and with authentic expression approaching girls that peak my sexual or romantic interest. I envision getting good nights of long sleep and feeling energized and eager to welcome my day every day. I envision feeling less depressed less often and lower anxiety of all forms including social anxiety. WHat that looks like to me is being able to easily navigate choices and keep things in prespective. I envision following through with the things I satart on and mastering the things that I follow through with that are really importnat to me. These are just some of the amazing benefits I envison unlocking as I kick porn from my life and leave it farther and farther in the rear view mirror.
 

Fappy

Respected Member
Hey buddy
The symptoms you describe sound like textbook porn addiction withdrawal. But on the otherhand you mentioned feeling clearer and more motivated about life in general and being able to feel various emotions with more intensity. All of these are signs that you are winning!
What the addiction is trying to do is to trick you back into your old habits. Its a monster, and now its thrashing around desperately clawing at you trying to drag you back under.
Kick it in the balls! Dont let the little fucker push you around. When you feel it trying to get you to look at porn or messing with your triggers, knock it the fuck back down and tell it whos boss. YOU ARE!
Youve made it five days and already seeing positive results, fantastic. Go another five days and youll be amazed at the effects.
[deleted bad joke]
 
Hey Fappy,

Thanks pal, I can almost taste the sweet sucess of victory. at 10 days I can only immagine how proud I will be.

Best,
Fed-Up
 
8/29/18

5 days Sober (Evening)

Some days I just need to write in here twice to remind myself that this struggle and caring for my recovery from this crippling additction is my top priority. Some nights like tonight are particularly vulnerable for me because I feel some stress about a difficul conversation I need to have with my mentor tomorrow but even harder is the strong craving for having power in my world. I live out in the subburbs which is very lonely and Isolating sometimes because people don't interact with eachother in public and theres not many community spaces. Thres not a large number of people my age and people that I do know can be absorbed with work such that they loose sight of the imporant things in life like comunity and friendships and making the world a better place. I find myslef getting very frustrated sometimes with the culture here and I feel like I want to change it but worry that I can't do anything about it. Ofen times porn and the ability mentally escape into a workd where I can controll my "sex life" as well as a world where people are less inhibited is very aluring. Sometimes in the past Ill sit down at my loptop even when i'm not even horny and look at porn just because I like to see how confident the pornstars look in their movies. I see pornstars breaking the rules of social norms and knowing they are so desireable they can get away with it and it makes me long for that kind of overwhelming confidence to be able to do things that are taboo and be toatally fine with it. Sometimes thats when the porn makes me the most sick, when I sit down and masturbate not because I am horny or need physical release per se, but because I am lonely and wish I had some companionship and/or some power in the real world.

Its a toxic cycle of watching porn and isolating my true self from the real world and then watching more porn because I feel alone. I won't take it anymore and it makes me really fucking pissed that i've been subject to this for all these years. I know I have something positive to offer to to the world and I feel like porn has keept me locked inside of myself all these years. As of a few months ago I have 11 years with hardcore porn having some influece or somethimes controlling my life and it makes me sick just thinking about it
 
8/30/18

6 Days Sober

Dear Jornal, I swear that this forum is this forum is the place that keeps me alive. I don't mean literally but I do mean habitually. Every time I am super sexually charged or just craving an unhealthy scoop of brain poisonig porn, I just come here first and this is my refuge. I'm slowly turning this into the first website I open when I visit the internet because I want to be centered when I go on the internet and grounded in the importnace of staying away from and avoiding all porn and edging/ trigering material. Even as I say this stuff my mind still looks for excuses to crawl around my disicplined boundries and get me break open and go back to the dark lonely place.

Last night I was watching this video about this guy talking about discipline and how it is infinitely more important than motivation. I think of discipline as conrolled repeated steps that you take weather you feel like taking them or not that get you to the goal and slowly become habbit.
A few of these disciplined habbits I've started is coming on to reboot nation first thing when i am about to use the internet and I am home alone. The addition to that is that I only use my laptop in my room when there are people home if I have a very clear and non risky search mission that is quick and that I will not get distracted from. Another thing I have been doing is leaving my laptop in the dinnin room at night and immagining that i'm locking it in an invisable box that cannot be oppened until the morning so that I MAKE SURE that my my laptop is away from me during my most vulnerable hours of the day -- just before bed.

Places I can and need to improve to sober in the long run is leaving my phone out in the dinning room as well to keep all technology out of my room at night. I have an anologe alarm clock and I now have books that I can read before bed to take the place of any youtube videos. I also would like to create a routine of doing 10-15 minutes of meditation each day so that I can have lower anxiety levels throughout the day and by transitive properties, at night when I am most vulnerable. In addition I would like to try and get into be ready for sleep before midnight every night so that I can sleep better and again avoid more late night existential thoughts that press me to seek the mind numbing of porn.

Discipline also takes a strong connection to you "why" for doing anything so I want to make a reminder list of my core why's for cutting out porn.
1) I want to be the greatest version of myself in life and porn keeps me inside of a depressed lonely box.
2) I wan to be sexually free and adventurous and porn takes that away from me by giving me crippling social anxiety.
3) I want to have energy to do creative and risky things in life and using porn keeps me stuck in bed.
4) I want to be well rested in the morning while using porn robs hours and hours of good sleep
5) I want to seek truth and wisdom in this life and porn is an intentional way of telling myself lies.
6) I want to have non-sexually intimate human relationships with women and man, but porn tricks my brain into putting people into 2 categories, objectifiable and non objectifiable

Today I woke up feeling horny and super anxious for a release. I think I also feel axious about facing my mentor and telling them some uncomfortable truths for me. Its hard not to just want to escape into the numbing temporary happyness. But to stay strong in the face of fear, in the face of uncertainty is the most corageous thing you could do and just by staying disciplined and not using in this case you are exemplifying courage and winning a huge battle in the fight against addiction and in the fight of life.
 
8/30/18

6 days sober

Tonight I feel some shame, I looked at a few sexual immages on google before closing the tab. Ive been experiencin heavy withdrawl symtoms that include feeling very depressed and powerless. I want to feel loved I want to feel strong and eventhough Im living with my family, I feel alone in my struggles and poorly understood.
 

Fappy

Respected Member
Those feelings will pass soon, don't worry. It's normal to experience them at this early stage.
Just remember, you would feel worse if you look at porn
 
9/11/18

Puting an end to the Freefall
Sobriety Ratio 13:5. Sobriety Streak: Day 0

For the last 5 days I have been in porn driven freefall. I stayed sober for 13 days straight. No porn, no masturbation and I had more energy, more mental clarity, more happyness, less tiredness. Then I became so longing and desiring of sexual companionship I slped up and jumped on this app called Whisper. I found someone who was willing to do a text based sexual roleplay where I was able to dominate her charcter and put her through all of my most violent sexual fantasies.  I became so arroused and so triggered that I watched a ton or porn and masturabted and I felt wrecked. The one thing I kept as a positve from all of this was that I can learn more about myself and how to get help when I need help. I aslo really like that concept that I read about on the no fap redit, someone was talking about how the community was so obsessed with streaks of sobriety that this leads to a dangerous acceptance of all out binge periods that people do think about how it will effect their brains because technically its not affecting their streak after they have already failed. I like much more the idea of having a good ratio of sober days to non sober days because then even if for some terrible reason you do break, you have incentive to get youreself unstuck quickly, not binge and get back to sober living. Im going to be measuring both from not on in my journals.

One thing that I learned is that just staying busy is not enough. I stayed busy for 7 days and did not watch porn for any of those days but then I also didnt write in my journal and check in and affirm my commiment to sobriety and on the 7th day of not checking in, I realized my mind had been slipping into old patterns uncounciously under the stress and the busyness, so then friday finally came I was in a position of great vulnerability.

I also learned that I have a strange maternal comfort instinct around some of these porn stars. I think because I grew up since the age of 11 frequently seeing them in some of my most difficult and vulnerable times there are certian pornstars like Asa Akira, Teanna Kai and Jessica Bangcock who I actually feel emotionally attached to and safe and more comfrtred when I see them. Its a delicate link between the sexuall and the personal and it sabatoges me in situations where I am vulnerble.

I also learned that this journal gives me a lot of strength and confort and that I need to be on here seiously if I want to win.
 
10/4/18

Number of days sober? Sobriety Streak ?

I return to my community after many days lost in the wild. I used porn on monday I think. I felt really sad about it because I did it on my phone in the car new where I and and old partner of mine used to have sex. It was 2 in the morning. I left my house to watch porn because I have a roomate and 14 housemates. I could tell in my heart of hearts that what I really wanted was to have sex with my old partner again and do something scandalous to break the rules. I was feeling boxed in by the rules of society and a lack of romantic partenrship in my life and I just wanted to be free. But since I parted company with that person I felt waek and vulnerable. I wasn't even happy when I fianally orgasmed I could just tell that I wanted to be with my partner and have that fun and intimacy and it felt so hollow and empty. its making me sad.

 

Fappy

Respected Member
Ok dont dwell on it too much. The trigger seems to be the red-hot memory of your previous sexual partner? If so, youll have to take some steps toward somehow fighting those memories back.
 
11/20/18
Number of days sober 7

Hello and back again. I thought very councously about wherer or not I should start a whole new thread or re post on this one. I decided that it would be better to post on this one so that I coul keep a trajectory with my old posts and see how things are changing. In the past I have gotten caught up in starting up a new journal every time I relapse and trying to throw my sense of failure out the window with it but I changing my patterns and sitting with the faliure this time, allowing it to be and practicing letting go of the shame around it.

I've been sober for 7 days. Its fucking amazing. After about 4 days I notced the brian fog and general sense of supression start to fade. At 7 days, the highs are so much higher and the lows are somewhat manageable. I feel that being off of porn is like being off of morphine or haroine. My brain can get so much more excited about little things and things that arent pure pleasure, that are more dynamic experices like socializing or witing a paper or playing sports because its off of the hard stuff (that being the sheer amounts of seratonin and dopanine flodding the brain when I've been using). Now being off of it for 7 days the brian is so much more able to take in regualr pleasurable experiences in life. The harder part about this is the uneasyness and restlessness that comes with it. If you have been numb and passified by chemicals in your brain and you stop taking them then all of the sudden things can seem a lot more overwhelming. In my case I have been taking responsibility for things tht I was not doing so before, such as my acadmeics, my social life and my physical health (espacially my overeating). Those things are sacry to take accountability for if youve been not giving a shit since your brain was on artificial dopamine. Giving a shit is hard! thats why, im being more lenient and kind to myslef, when things get overwhelming or hard I'm more willing to go be a lone or meditate or take a nap and just put less stress on myslef, because worry about things constantly is super diffucult.

On a good and fun note, I woke up early today with not too much trouble and I went to class on time. I went to go talk to my TA afterwards, who I happen to have a crush on, and insted of being terrifying it was actually fun! I tlaked to her about her life and her research and she thanked me for doing that! Im so stoked.

 
11/20/18

Relapse

This is my first time ever actually making a relapse post. I was doing great this morning and somehow that didn'tt ransition over well into the afternoon. I got really stressed out and hyper anxious becuase of finding out that several of my classmates are religious. As an atheist and not being raised around religion at all i'm afraid of people who are and I worry about what it all means. So I got hyper stressed and I go poor sleep last night leading me to run out of energy about half way through the day. I got in bad mood and sudddenly became very stressed by my my homework and stared worrying about random shit. Now I got so stressed and so depreesed in the evening that I felt like I needed a drug to release my mind and just knock me out. I used porn and masturbated and it was intense. I'm not gonna feel guilty about it though, Im just going to learn from the situation and keep fighting forwards.
 
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